Blessings, Part 16
Title: Blessings, Part 16
Paring: House/Cuddy established
Characters: House, Cuddy, Rachel, Wilson, some OCs
Warnings: some angst, unplanned pregnancy, minor medical crisis. there is no tragedy in this fic.
Summary: “It is one of the blessings of old friends that we can afford to be stupid with them._” - Emerson
This story is set about six years after the end of “Help Me.”
Comments are welcomed.
“House,” Cuddy said wearily, “what are you doing over here? Don’t you have a staff of your own to terrorize, yet?”
After finding a place to live, a school for Rachel, a yoga studio, a dry cleaners, a reliable babysitter, several acceptable takeout restaurants, and all of the various medical professionals who kept her family all functional, Cuddy assumed that hiring a full battalion of staff would be the easier part of this whole midlife course correction. House only had to fill five positions, but mulish as ever, he wasn’t even trying.
“Taub’s out closing on a house and Townsend and Shaeffer are treating. It was nephretic diabetes insipidous,” he announced. “I need a new case.”
“Well you can’t have that one, “ Renata Mills said, and grabbed a file from his hand. “It’s ours. Get your own.”
“Hey!” House reached out to snag it back, and Renata tightened her grip on it. They struggled for a moment, Renata, who was twelve inches shorter than House and weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet, managing to hold her own.
“Do you know this person, Doctor Cuddy?”
“I do.” Cuddy nodded at the security guard, and smiled apologetically at Renata. “I’ll take care of this, thank you.”
House dodged around Renata and took another file from the reception desk. “Hmm,” he mused, opening it up. “This one looks interesting.”
Renata rolled her eyes. “Oh yeah, it’s fascinating. Fourteen year old male, presents with a roofing nail in his left foot. Whatever could possibly be wrong with him?”
“That’s not the interesting part,” House retorted, holding an x-ray, up to the light. The nail had completely penetrated the small bones, impaling itself in the boy’s boot. “Why, does he have a roofing nail in his foot?”
“Weren’t you listening?” Renata huffed. “Fourteen. Year. Old. Male.”
House cocked his head and digested this data. “Point,” he conceded. He lowered the x-ray, but didn’t give it back, regarding it with a deep disappointment.
“It’s a steel-toed boot,” Renata amended, somewhat mollified, and pointed. "He probably thought the steel goes over the toe, not around the edge of it, and decided to experiment.”
“With a nail gun? Without taking the boot off, first?” Cuddy couldn’t help wondering aloud.
“Fourteen year old male,” House and Renata said together.
House’s expression sobered. He scrubbed his chin with his hand.
“Saaaaay,” he said to Renata.
Over the course of three divorces, James Wilson had compiled a list of Ten Things To Never Ever EVER Say To An Irritated Woman.
1. “You’re being irrational,” House said.
“Irrational?” Cuddy, who in fact looked quite rational, if homicidal, repeated incredulously. “Like I’m not perfectly justified in hating you for swooping in and stealing one of the best family practitioners in the tri-state area, two weeks after I hired her?”
“I did not swoop,” House confided casually to Wilson, as he plucked a breadstick from the basket in the center of the table.
“No, you just offered her a better salary and benefits and a chance to work as one person of an eight-member team on one patient at a time, when all I can give her is a staff of six and a normal-to-heavy patient load. And if that’s not enough, you had the nerve to pull the we-have-a-day-care-center card.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining,” House allowed generously. 2. “You’re hot when you’re crazy.”
“This doctor Mills - she’s aware she will be working for House, though, right?” Wilson put in affably. “She has met him?”
“A day care center," she answered. "Right there in the hospital. Most single mothers would work for … well, even … House, … for that. “
“How many times do I have to tell you?!” Three tables over, a middle-aged woman demanded loudly, and the man seated across from her cringed. “It’s not the sauce, Raymond, it’s the last fifteen years!!”
Wilson had no idea what that meant, but it did not sound like good news for Raymond.
“The woman’s a University of Virginia grad. Double specialties, in OB-GYN and pediatrics.” Cuddy leveled a glare at House as he filled her wine glass. “I had her first.”
“I have her now,” House replied glibly. He looked over at Cuddy’s salad and asked:
3. “Do you really think you should be eating that?”
Cuddy appeared to try, once again, to ignite her spouse into flames with her thoughts. “Don’t start on my appetite,” she advised. “Not after you had the gall, the unmitigated gall, to invite me to lunch after you took one of my best people, from right under my nose.”
“House never mitigates his gall,” Wilson muttered, half to himself. “Or anything else, really. It’s one of his distinguishing features.”
He’d spent some time, during the last few months, speculating about what House and Cuddy would fight about, once their professional spheres had no overlap. As it turned out, House could complicate Cuddy’s working life even if they worked in separate buildings. He’d have to mention that to Chase and Foreman, who’d each expressed privately the worry that life at PPTH without House might -- someday, after the jubilation wore off, -- seem a bit dull.
“You’ve lost eight pounds in the last six months,” House defended. He turned to Wilson. “Eight of my favorite pounds, if you know what I mean.”
Wilson valued his own life, so he was going to pretend he had no idea what House meant. “I feel your pain” he said reasonably, and just a smidge vindictively, to Cuddy. “Some asshole once poached one of my best hematologists, right out from under me. I complained to the dean of medicine, but it got me nowhere. By the way, how is Josh Shaeffer?”
“I should have known you’d take his side,” she grumbled, attacking a leaf of romaine lettuce.
“Obviously.” House’s tone of voice implied that, 4A. any intelligent and sane person would agree with me , because 4B. you are neither.
“Funny, that’s exactly what I said to the dean of medicine, at the time.” Wilson endured Cuddy’s scowl and scooted his chair over to make room for Kristen.
“This sucks,” his girlfriend/fiance said, lowering herself clumsily into the chair. “I can’t even get through a meal without needing a potty break. That’s why it took us so long to get here: poor James had to pull over to find a place for me to pee, about every other exit.”
“How’s work going?” Cuddy asked.
“It’s not, very. I’ve already cut site inspections and conferences as much as I can, but if this keeps up I’m going to have to move my office and start meeting clients in the bathroom. Kind of adds new meaning to the words ‘event planner.’”
“Well, you look terrific.”
“You’re too nice.”
“Yeah, that’s my Cuddy. Nice to a fault,” House agreed sarcastically, around a mouthful of pizza. 5,6,7,8 and 9. "Just like her mother.”
“I look awful.” Kristen looked dispiritedly down at her barely- touched meal. She chased a crumb around the red gingham tablecloth with her napkin. “I can’t drink. I can’t have coffee. I can’t sleep. It’s getting tough to work. I haven’t seen my feet in weeks. I can’t wear my contact lenses, because apparently even my frikkin’ eyeballs are swollen. My back aches. The morning sickness is gone, but now my stomach is being compressed so much I can’t eat much either. And none of my friends have kids, so they don’t get it. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you inviting me this weekend, Lisa. You’re a total angel.”
10. “That’s just your hormones talking,” House said.
They took home enough food to fill the top shelf of the refrigerator.
“No mere refrigerator,” House bragged. Wilson nodded enviously on cue. “It’s a stainless steel state of the art food cool storage system. Just look at this baby, Wilson: adjustable shelves, built in water purifying dispenser, dessicant dehumidification, defrosting panel; the works. It almost makes up for the slimy green,”
“Moss grey,” Cuddy interrupted.
“and pink,”
“Muted rose,” Cuddy sighed,
“-- tile in the bathroom.”
“Travertine tile,” Cuddy emphasized. “Italian. Even with his dream refrigerator and that front-loading washer and dryer, he can’t quit bitching about it.”
“Shit,” she said, and turned to House. “I do sound like my mother.”
“How do you think I feel?” he asked petulantly. “I sound like Wilson.”
In the process of carrying Kristen’s bag to the guest room, Wilson had made his way over to the sofa, where he stood uncertainly. “Um, Hello,” he said, looking down.
“DOWN,” Cuddy commanded forcefully.
The dog stretched out against the cushions, thumped her tail three times, stood up, then lay back down.
Cuddy put her hands on her hips. “DOWN, damn it.”
She was answered with a repeat of the triple tail thump, the stand, and the compliant down.
“DOWN,” Cuddy said, and jabbed her finger toward the floor.
The dog blinked innocently. If Wilson had been prone to anthropomorphizing, he’d have sworn she grinned.
“Greg,” Cuddy pleaded.
“Georgie,” House said patiently. “Off.”
With a sparkle in her deep brown eyes that conveyed the sentiment, as clearly as if she’d said it aloud, “Well, why didn’t you say so, then?” the dog jumped off the sofa and trotted over to House, following him into the master bedroom.
“I swear to God, she knows what I mean,” Cuddy asserted, flopping into a chair. “She does it on purpose.”
“Even House’s dog is an uncooperative smartass,” Wilson noted. With an eye on the bedroom door, he consciously lowered his voice. “How’s he been?”
“Lonely,” she replied sadly. “He tries not to show it, but he is. A few weeks ago we came home and Rachel and her friend Eva - the little girl who lives here in the building, the one she’s sleeping over with tonight - were playing a computer game. Some supposedly educational thing Miss July set up for Rachel. It beats me how helping little blue people get over mudball walls and feed pizza trolls and run away from Fleens has anything to do with math, but whatever. They asked him to help, and he did - I think he did, anyway, if that's what "hip, hip, Zoooooombiiiiinis!" means -- but for a second, he looked so … sad. I think, just for that moment, he caught himself being jealous of Rachel for having a best friend.”
Wilson squelched a lance of guilt, blended with a more frightening emotion. “He seems fine.”
“He is. But he’d be happier with you, here. Not just every other weekend with long skypes and calls on Tuesdays, but … here. I’d be happier if you were here. You’d be happier if you were here. Kristen would be happy anywhere. What are you waiting for?”
Wilson would never recall what he answered. He would never be able to pinpoint, exactly when, or why, he had handed over the responsibility of loving House to this woman, why he’d ever thought that it was necessary to distance himself from the man, how he’d ever hoped to have a complete life when severing himself.
He would only remember that twenty minutes later, when Kristen, pale as a ghost, her pajama pants soaked with blood, came in and collapsed onto the couch, saying, “Hun, could you please call 911 for me?” it was House he called out for, and it was Cuddy who snapped out orders to the EMTs and held his hand in the ambulance, for no reason but they were there, and those were the things that needed doing.
Part 17
Paring: House/Cuddy established
Characters: House, Cuddy, Rachel, Wilson, some OCs
Warnings: some angst, unplanned pregnancy, minor medical crisis. there is no tragedy in this fic.
Summary: “It is one of the blessings of old friends that we can afford to be stupid with them._” - Emerson
This story is set about six years after the end of “Help Me.”
Comments are welcomed.
“House,” Cuddy said wearily, “what are you doing over here? Don’t you have a staff of your own to terrorize, yet?”
After finding a place to live, a school for Rachel, a yoga studio, a dry cleaners, a reliable babysitter, several acceptable takeout restaurants, and all of the various medical professionals who kept her family all functional, Cuddy assumed that hiring a full battalion of staff would be the easier part of this whole midlife course correction. House only had to fill five positions, but mulish as ever, he wasn’t even trying.
“Taub’s out closing on a house and Townsend and Shaeffer are treating. It was nephretic diabetes insipidous,” he announced. “I need a new case.”
“Well you can’t have that one, “ Renata Mills said, and grabbed a file from his hand. “It’s ours. Get your own.”
“Hey!” House reached out to snag it back, and Renata tightened her grip on it. They struggled for a moment, Renata, who was twelve inches shorter than House and weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet, managing to hold her own.
“Do you know this person, Doctor Cuddy?”
“I do.” Cuddy nodded at the security guard, and smiled apologetically at Renata. “I’ll take care of this, thank you.”
House dodged around Renata and took another file from the reception desk. “Hmm,” he mused, opening it up. “This one looks interesting.”
Renata rolled her eyes. “Oh yeah, it’s fascinating. Fourteen year old male, presents with a roofing nail in his left foot. Whatever could possibly be wrong with him?”
“That’s not the interesting part,” House retorted, holding an x-ray, up to the light. The nail had completely penetrated the small bones, impaling itself in the boy’s boot. “Why, does he have a roofing nail in his foot?”
“Weren’t you listening?” Renata huffed. “Fourteen. Year. Old. Male.”
House cocked his head and digested this data. “Point,” he conceded. He lowered the x-ray, but didn’t give it back, regarding it with a deep disappointment.
“It’s a steel-toed boot,” Renata amended, somewhat mollified, and pointed. "He probably thought the steel goes over the toe, not around the edge of it, and decided to experiment.”
“With a nail gun? Without taking the boot off, first?” Cuddy couldn’t help wondering aloud.
“Fourteen year old male,” House and Renata said together.
House’s expression sobered. He scrubbed his chin with his hand.
“Saaaaay,” he said to Renata.
Over the course of three divorces, James Wilson had compiled a list of Ten Things To Never Ever EVER Say To An Irritated Woman.
1. “You’re being irrational,” House said.
“Irrational?” Cuddy, who in fact looked quite rational, if homicidal, repeated incredulously. “Like I’m not perfectly justified in hating you for swooping in and stealing one of the best family practitioners in the tri-state area, two weeks after I hired her?”
“I did not swoop,” House confided casually to Wilson, as he plucked a breadstick from the basket in the center of the table.
“No, you just offered her a better salary and benefits and a chance to work as one person of an eight-member team on one patient at a time, when all I can give her is a staff of six and a normal-to-heavy patient load. And if that’s not enough, you had the nerve to pull the we-have-a-day-care-center card.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining,” House allowed generously. 2. “You’re hot when you’re crazy.”
“This doctor Mills - she’s aware she will be working for House, though, right?” Wilson put in affably. “She has met him?”
“A day care center," she answered. "Right there in the hospital. Most single mothers would work for … well, even … House, … for that. “
“How many times do I have to tell you?!” Three tables over, a middle-aged woman demanded loudly, and the man seated across from her cringed. “It’s not the sauce, Raymond, it’s the last fifteen years!!”
Wilson had no idea what that meant, but it did not sound like good news for Raymond.
“The woman’s a University of Virginia grad. Double specialties, in OB-GYN and pediatrics.” Cuddy leveled a glare at House as he filled her wine glass. “I had her first.”
“I have her now,” House replied glibly. He looked over at Cuddy’s salad and asked:
3. “Do you really think you should be eating that?”
Cuddy appeared to try, once again, to ignite her spouse into flames with her thoughts. “Don’t start on my appetite,” she advised. “Not after you had the gall, the unmitigated gall, to invite me to lunch after you took one of my best people, from right under my nose.”
“House never mitigates his gall,” Wilson muttered, half to himself. “Or anything else, really. It’s one of his distinguishing features.”
He’d spent some time, during the last few months, speculating about what House and Cuddy would fight about, once their professional spheres had no overlap. As it turned out, House could complicate Cuddy’s working life even if they worked in separate buildings. He’d have to mention that to Chase and Foreman, who’d each expressed privately the worry that life at PPTH without House might -- someday, after the jubilation wore off, -- seem a bit dull.
“You’ve lost eight pounds in the last six months,” House defended. He turned to Wilson. “Eight of my favorite pounds, if you know what I mean.”
Wilson valued his own life, so he was going to pretend he had no idea what House meant. “I feel your pain” he said reasonably, and just a smidge vindictively, to Cuddy. “Some asshole once poached one of my best hematologists, right out from under me. I complained to the dean of medicine, but it got me nowhere. By the way, how is Josh Shaeffer?”
“I should have known you’d take his side,” she grumbled, attacking a leaf of romaine lettuce.
“Obviously.” House’s tone of voice implied that, 4A. any intelligent and sane person would agree with me , because 4B. you are neither.
“Funny, that’s exactly what I said to the dean of medicine, at the time.” Wilson endured Cuddy’s scowl and scooted his chair over to make room for Kristen.
“This sucks,” his girlfriend/fiance said, lowering herself clumsily into the chair. “I can’t even get through a meal without needing a potty break. That’s why it took us so long to get here: poor James had to pull over to find a place for me to pee, about every other exit.”
“How’s work going?” Cuddy asked.
“It’s not, very. I’ve already cut site inspections and conferences as much as I can, but if this keeps up I’m going to have to move my office and start meeting clients in the bathroom. Kind of adds new meaning to the words ‘event planner.’”
“Well, you look terrific.”
“You’re too nice.”
“Yeah, that’s my Cuddy. Nice to a fault,” House agreed sarcastically, around a mouthful of pizza. 5,6,7,8 and 9. "Just like her mother.”
“I look awful.” Kristen looked dispiritedly down at her barely- touched meal. She chased a crumb around the red gingham tablecloth with her napkin. “I can’t drink. I can’t have coffee. I can’t sleep. It’s getting tough to work. I haven’t seen my feet in weeks. I can’t wear my contact lenses, because apparently even my frikkin’ eyeballs are swollen. My back aches. The morning sickness is gone, but now my stomach is being compressed so much I can’t eat much either. And none of my friends have kids, so they don’t get it. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you inviting me this weekend, Lisa. You’re a total angel.”
10. “That’s just your hormones talking,” House said.
They took home enough food to fill the top shelf of the refrigerator.
“No mere refrigerator,” House bragged. Wilson nodded enviously on cue. “It’s a stainless steel state of the art food cool storage system. Just look at this baby, Wilson: adjustable shelves, built in water purifying dispenser, dessicant dehumidification, defrosting panel; the works. It almost makes up for the slimy green,”
“Moss grey,” Cuddy interrupted.
“and pink,”
“Muted rose,” Cuddy sighed,
“-- tile in the bathroom.”
“Travertine tile,” Cuddy emphasized. “Italian. Even with his dream refrigerator and that front-loading washer and dryer, he can’t quit bitching about it.”
“Shit,” she said, and turned to House. “I do sound like my mother.”
“How do you think I feel?” he asked petulantly. “I sound like Wilson.”
In the process of carrying Kristen’s bag to the guest room, Wilson had made his way over to the sofa, where he stood uncertainly. “Um, Hello,” he said, looking down.
“DOWN,” Cuddy commanded forcefully.
The dog stretched out against the cushions, thumped her tail three times, stood up, then lay back down.
Cuddy put her hands on her hips. “DOWN, damn it.”
She was answered with a repeat of the triple tail thump, the stand, and the compliant down.
“DOWN,” Cuddy said, and jabbed her finger toward the floor.
The dog blinked innocently. If Wilson had been prone to anthropomorphizing, he’d have sworn she grinned.
“Greg,” Cuddy pleaded.
“Georgie,” House said patiently. “Off.”
With a sparkle in her deep brown eyes that conveyed the sentiment, as clearly as if she’d said it aloud, “Well, why didn’t you say so, then?” the dog jumped off the sofa and trotted over to House, following him into the master bedroom.
“I swear to God, she knows what I mean,” Cuddy asserted, flopping into a chair. “She does it on purpose.”
“Even House’s dog is an uncooperative smartass,” Wilson noted. With an eye on the bedroom door, he consciously lowered his voice. “How’s he been?”
“Lonely,” she replied sadly. “He tries not to show it, but he is. A few weeks ago we came home and Rachel and her friend Eva - the little girl who lives here in the building, the one she’s sleeping over with tonight - were playing a computer game. Some supposedly educational thing Miss July set up for Rachel. It beats me how helping little blue people get over mudball walls and feed pizza trolls and run away from Fleens has anything to do with math, but whatever. They asked him to help, and he did - I think he did, anyway, if that's what "hip, hip, Zoooooombiiiiinis!" means -- but for a second, he looked so … sad. I think, just for that moment, he caught himself being jealous of Rachel for having a best friend.”
Wilson squelched a lance of guilt, blended with a more frightening emotion. “He seems fine.”
“He is. But he’d be happier with you, here. Not just every other weekend with long skypes and calls on Tuesdays, but … here. I’d be happier if you were here. You’d be happier if you were here. Kristen would be happy anywhere. What are you waiting for?”
Wilson would never recall what he answered. He would never be able to pinpoint, exactly when, or why, he had handed over the responsibility of loving House to this woman, why he’d ever thought that it was necessary to distance himself from the man, how he’d ever hoped to have a complete life when severing himself.
He would only remember that twenty minutes later, when Kristen, pale as a ghost, her pajama pants soaked with blood, came in and collapsed onto the couch, saying, “Hun, could you please call 911 for me?” it was House he called out for, and it was Cuddy who snapped out orders to the EMTs and held his hand in the ambulance, for no reason but they were there, and those were the things that needed doing.
Part 17